Evaulating Web Site Performance

by Hightide

by ddawg

Setting up a website is the very first step of an Internet marketing campaign, and the success or failure of your site depends greatly on how specifically you have defined your website goals. If you don’t know what you want your site to accomplish, it will most likely fail to accomplish anything. Without goals to guide you in developing and monitoring your website, all your site will be is an online announcement that you are in business.

If you expect your site to stimulate some form of action, whether it is visitors filling out a form so a representative can contact them, or purchasing a product, there are steps you can take to insure that your website is functioning at peak efficiency. One of the first indicators of how well your site is working for you is finding out the number of visitors in a given period of time. A good baseline measurement is a month in which you haven’t been doing any unusual offline promotional activities.

However, just because hoards of people have passed through your gates does not mean your site is successful. Usually, you want those visitors to actually do something there. It is equally important to monitor the number of visitors to your site who made a purchase. This figure is called the site conversion rate, and it is an essential element of the efficacy of your website.

To find the site conversion rate, take the number of visitors per month and figure out the percentage of them that actually performed the action your site is set up for. For example, if you had 2,000 hits to your site, but only 25 of them purchased your product, your site conversion rate equals 1.25%. To get this figure, take your number of visitors and divide that figure by the number of visitors who made a purchase. Then divide that result by 100 (25 ?00 X 100).

If your website is set-up to get visitors to fill out a form, make sure to then figure out what the difference is between your site conversion rate and your sales conversion rate. This is because not everyone who fills out your form will actually become your customer. However, whether your site is set-up to sell a service or product, or to get the visitor to fill out a form, the site conversion rate will measure the success or failure of your website whenever you make changes to the site.

You may find that you need to implement some additional marketing strategies if you find that traffic to your site is extremely low. There are several effective methods to improve the flow of traffic to your website, particularly launching a search engine optimization campaign. This campaign is targeted at increasing your position in search engine results so that consumers can find your pages faster and easier. You can either research the steps you need to take to improve your search engine rankings, or employ a search engine optimization company to do the work for you. In either case, after your have improved your search engine positions, make sure you keep on top of them by regular monitoring and adjusting of your efforts to maintain high positions.

Another factor to examine is how easy it is for a visitor to your website to accomplish the action the site is set-up for. For example, if your goal is for the visitor to fill out a form, is this form easily accessible, or does the visitor have to go through four levels to get to it? If it’s too difficult to get to, the customer may just throw in the towel and move on to another site. Make sure your buttons are highly visible, and the path to your form or ordering page quickly accessible.

Finally, have a professional evaluate the copy on your website. The goal is, of course, to get your visitor to make a purchase or fill out your form. Website copy must be specifically geared to your online campaign and not just a cut and paste job from your company brochure. The right copy can make the difference between profit and loss in your online campaign.

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Banner Ads Suffer, Take Advantage

by Hightide

by Dale Sexton

Effectiveness of banners are declining. Most web surfers can spot banners and have trained themselves to ignore them. Cooperation between webpage owner and advertiser is needed to resolve this.

Billions of dollars are spent for website promotion, over 75% is spent on banner ads. Large corporations spent most of this money on branding. For us in small business, only a very small group know how to use banners to there full potential.

-Tips for the Webpage Owner-

Page design and banner placement are vital for a higher click-through ratio with affiliate banners for the webpage owner. If you use banners, build your site around them to get maximum benefit. Why use banners if your not getting some form of payment?

Banner placement within the first screen a user sees will pull higher than those placed further down a web page (requiring a visitor to scroll down to see it). Most banners at the top of a page are ignored.

Banners placed 1/3 down the page are more effective. Banners (or buttons) placed on the lower right side of the screen (near the scroll bar) pull twice as much than banners placed at the top of the page.

>>>>Click HERE for the rest of the article.

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5 Hidden Resources For eBay Users

by Hightide

by Jason James

Many thousands of people making a living both buying & selling on eBay. Currently ranked as the 37 biggest site on the net (according to Alexa figures) eBay shows no signs of slowing down, even fortune 500 companies are opening eBay shops to sell surplus & unwanted stock. The following are five resources that I use personally & encourage you to use them to increase your eBay profits with ease.

Reports show that over 90% of searches on eBay are done using the search facility. What users do not know about eBays search factility is that by default it only searches the item titles – not the descriptions of the items. Remember this fact as it will show the significance of some of the resources listed below.

1) FatFingers

How professional a seller are you? Do you check your listings before submitting them or even does someone else proof read them for you? With millions of listings on eBays networks of sites at any one time, a small proportion of these listings contain errors – & a misspelt word is about the biggest error you can make.

Imagine your selling a Sony Television for example. What if you misspell the item as Sony Televisoin. Anyone who searches for the term “Sony Television” simply isn’t going to be presented with your item. Only those eBayers who search manually though the category will find your items. Needless to say that if people can’t find your item, they’re unable to bid on them.

FatFingers is a service you can use to find all misspelt variations of a term. Why would you need such a service?

Well obviously if an item has low visibility on eBay it’s also likely to have zero or few bids enabling you to snap yourself up a bargain. I’ve known people use this service to make a full time living, purely buying items cheaply and relisting them without errors.

Details at: Fatfingers.com

2) eBay Pulse

Back to the search facility eBay pulse shows you the top 10 searched keywords in every category. It’s a real gem of a service, obviously by looking at the most widely used search terms you can see what eBayers are after. And if your selling in this category, by inserting some of these keywords within your title your items will be seen by more users.

The only thing to watch out with this service is make sure the keywords are relevant to your item, IF NOT DON’T USE THEM. How many times have you saw listings such as “SONY PANASONIC LG WIDESCREEN DIGITAL TELEVISION GUIDE”, – listings such as these are well thought out to earn high visibility from the way users search. Anyone searching for the items with any of the keywords will uncover your listings.

While it may lead to a high number of views, firstly fellow users will get annoyed if they find your item completely unrevealed to what they searched for, Secondly keyword spamming as it is known, is against eBay policy and will lead to your item being pulled. I use pulse daily with all my listings but make sure it’s relevant to your item first.

Details at: pulse.ebay.com

3) Keyword-Pro

Keyword-Pro is a commercial subscription service which is similar to eBay pulse. However, the main difference is Keyword-Pro offers a much more in depth list of relevant keywords. It lists the top 50 keywords for every category for both eBay.co.uk & eBay.com. This is a great addition, especially if any of the terms found in eBay pulse are not relevant to your item.

Keyword-Pro is available as both a web service or as a small program that downloads the list onto your P.C. It’s data is updated weekly to keep you informed of the latest search terms.

Details at Trading-Web-Solutions.com/keywords

4) Selling Manager

When you first open a selling account on eBay, options listed under the sell tab of eBay are enough to get you by. However, you can upgrade to a more in depth service known as Selling Manager. As eBay describes the service “eBay Selling Manager is our online sales management tool for medium to high volume sellers”. It allows you to track every eBay sale, customise your feedback comments, print shipping labels & much more. It saves me about four hours a week tracking orders and watching my sales.

Selling Manager is FREE on eBay.co.uk & has a small monthly charge of on eBay.com (after one a month trial free). Once I moved over to Selling Manager, there’s simply no way I would go back.

Details at: Click on services once you’ve logged into your eBay account.

5) eBay Popular Products

Here you can see, directly from eBay, what the most popular products are in several categories. an invaluable tool for an eBay seller.

Details at: http://product-index.ebay.com/best_selling_1.html

I hope you find these services useful & time saving in your goal for a successful home business on eBay. Remember, your most important resource is your time when your starting or building up an online business & if you discover any site, person or opportunity that can save you time give it the attention & serious consideration it deserves. Every top Internet marketers constantly educate themselves by purchasing & reviewing almost every new product released. The way I look at it, if an ebook costs $197 and the information within the ebook saves me this or allows me to make an additional $197 it’s well worth it – once you can do it once you’ll be able to repeat the exercise over and over again making repeated profits. If you discover a precious eBay related resource let me know & I’ll consider revising this list for future editions.

Good luck with your eBay selling.

Copyright 2005 Auction Resource Network

About the Author:
Jason James’ website “The Auction Resource Network” reveals his inside secrets and sources that help him pocket over $10,000 a month on eBay. Claim your FREE 14 Day “Learn How to Sell on eBay” e-Course Here:

http://www.auctionresourcenetwork.com

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Don’t Get Ripped Off….

by Hightide

USA Today.com has an article dealing with hurricane cyberscams. Doesn’t it make you sick that such an article even has a need to exist. Says a lot about the damage greed will do to what’s left of someone’s character.

Don’t get ripped off by hurricane cyberscams!

Joi
Hightide-Web.com

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Google Never Sleeps

by Hightide

You’ve just gotta love Google. They didn’t coin the phrase, “Don’t let any grass grow under your feet.” – they live it!

Maybe that’s why their view of the rest of the world involves a downward glance.

Here’s a link to a review of what they’re into now: Google Talk works well but lacks some features.

Give to the Red Cross. Give until it hurts.

Joi
Hightide-Web

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Create A Website In Less Than A Week

by Hightide

How To Create A Website In Less Than A Week

By: Andre Grisby

Here’s a really simple way… any novice can create a fully functional website in less than a week.

Websites are the wave of the future. Although many companies are using an online presence to drive business to their brick and mortar stores, many hobbyists also tend to have a bit of interest in developing their own online presence as well. Developing a website from scratch can be rather expensive, but armed with the right tools, and given a little instruction, anyone can develop a professional website in less than a week.

One thing you must always remember is that anyone trying to do a particular job should be armed with the right tools. Having the right tools will definitely make your project a bit easier to complete.

I guess you are scratching your head wondering what type of tools I would be talking about. You see when you are developing a website, you become a builder, a painter, or an artist. You are taking an idea from your head and transforming it into a digital image so to speak. Just as if you were going to build a home from the ground up, take a paint brush and create a masterpiece painting, or take a piece of clay and create a winning statue, you need the right tools to do the right job.

The tools I’m referring to are web graphics software, web design software, and ftp (file transfer protocol)software. These are tools are a must if you want to get off on the right foot. There are so many of these types of programs that you must really do your homework in order to purchase the one the best fits your needs. Some of these programs can even be downloaded for free. Each program focuses on a particular task. The graphics software helps you create images for your website from scratch. The web design software in short helps you to design and build a website from scratch. The file transfer protocol software is you link to sending your completed web pages from you computer to the internet. [Continue]

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The “Google Dance”

by Hightide

Read what happens when Google parties: Keeping enemies close at the Google Dance

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Google Sitemaps..

by Hightide

Google Sitemaps is a simple and fast way for your site to be constantly indexed and updated by Google.

This article will discuss the benefits of implementing this new technology, who should use it, how it works and how to create a Google Sitemap for your web site. More…

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Writing Good Blogs

by Hightide

by: Jesse S. Somer

‘Bad blogs have got to go, blogging could be really cool if done properly, maybe even with a pinch of love.’

There’s a lot of blogs out there on the Web, most of which don’t entice one to go back regularly to read updates. What is missing from these on-line journals that would essentially make them ‘good’ blogs? Well, the answers in life usually come down to simplicities. So let’s look at the problem like we were children. Children don’t complicate life with miscellaneous information, and when they speak they tell you straight to the point exactly how they feel and think about a subject.

First of all, we should ask the questions,” Why do blogs exist? And what are they here for?” Well, in an ideal world ‘good’ blogs would help people connect, sharing knowledge and feelings about issues in life. As they are journals written by individuals we would hope that they’d be readable and open to comment by all other people, not just a select group of friends. The key is speaking in a way that is understandable by the masses, get rid of acronyms and local slang that only few will comprehend. Keep the sentences grammatically simple and generally short and concise.

Try to write in your blog as often as possible because if people enjoy reading your thoughts and ideas they’ll want to communicate or at least be filled in regularly on ‘your world’. Ask questions, comment on other blogs of similar content, start communities with others you’ve never met, based on your interests. Keep focused; if your blog is about thoughts on war and peace, keep your thoughts on the latest movie and how hungry you are for somewhere else. The idea is to incite intelligent communication so that in time our collective stockpile of knowledge and wisdom will gradually grow like a tree in fertile soil.

I think of most importance is the fact that you want this journal to be ‘good’ reading. Of course we all have ideas about what genres and styles we like, but writing from your heart and soul is imperative for the connection with others that you’re looking for. Share yourself; don’t hide behind walls of fear of ridicule and judgment. In real life relationships trust, respect, intimacy, and unity are all necessary for a bond to form. It’s the same in the ‘virtual’ world; people want to hear from real people-not just one-sided, highly opinionated arguments from egos that don’t want to hear the ‘other side of the coin’.

Now, in my last article I really tore apart most writers out there, and here I’m giving some pretty complex ideas on how to fix the problem of ‘bad’ writing. In my next article I’ll attempt to go back to the simple basics of how to write for beginners. I hope I haven’t come across as too judgmental, I just truly believe the ‘blog world’ could become a real asset to humanity, and at the moment it’s missing the mark.

Ideas about sentence structure, grammar, paragraphing, using a thesaurus (varying terms used so as not to sound repetitive), whether or not your blog is suitable for a personal or professional approach, are all important to creating a simple and enjoyable read for the blogging visitor. If you are a beginner, please check out my next article on the basics.

By Jesse S. Somer

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HTML Editors 101 – Smaller Is Better

by Hightide

Microsoft FrontPage and Macromedia’s Dreamweaver aren’t the only HTML editors on the market. In fact, niche HTML editors from various independent developer offer a number of advantages over the big boys.

SiteSpinner

SiteSpinner is a user-friendly web site development tool that includes many advanced features such as drag-and-drop positioning, built in FTP to publish directly to your web site, an image editor and graphics creation all in one. With SiteSpinner, objects can be placed wherever you want them with your mouse. Not only that, you can place objects so they are always centered, or automatically scale to fit your visitors browser. The Text Editor works like a word processor, allowing you to change font, size and color. Add links and spell-check your work. Add titles and you have a professional page. The drag-and-drop Table Editor lets you quickly organize your information. Text, pictures, or any object can easily be dragged into position, and your table’s properties can be set the way you want them.

Full review posted at

http://www.deprice.com/sitespinner.htm

NoteTab Pro

NoteTab Pro is a leading-edge text editor and HTML coding tool, and an ideal Notepad replacement. Winner of top shareware industry awards since 1998, this elegant application does it all: you can handle multiple large files with a simple tabbed interface, use a spell-checker and thesaurus, format text, use multiple undo, and bookmark documents. You can build templates, use powerful system-wide searches, and do global multi-line replacements.

Full review posted at

http://www.deprice.com/notetabpro.htm

CoffeeCup HTML Editor

The CoffeeCup HTML Editor is 2 Editors in 1. If you know HTML or want to learn more use the powerful and easy Code Editor that has set the standard since 1996. To make pages fast, or without knowing HTML use the drag and drop WYSIWYG Visual Editor. You can also go back and forth between the Code and Visual Editors to create remarkable Websites in a snap. CoffeeCup comes with more than 100 DHTML & Javascripts, a DHTML Menu wizard, 25,000 Graphics and Photos including over 1,000 XP Style Icons and access to over 500 Free Website Templates. It also has Built-in FTP Uploading and easy to use Table, Frame, Font, and Form Designers.

Full review posted at http://www.deprice.com/coffeecuphtmleditor.htm

CodeLock 2.0

Codelock encrypts PHP and any HTML generated by your PHP scripts.
You can password protect your scripts, create an expiry time or unlock key, lock to IP or URL and more. The Encryptor software works with any install of PHP4.x or better. Requires no additional software to be installed (on your server or on your clients server) – Codelock V2 is ISP friendly. Works both on your ‘localhost’ server OR online via HTTP Works on Linux, Windows and FreeBSD operating systems. Requires no changes to the web server (with default PHP installation). Works in PHP safe mode and with globals off (except when encrypting from zip files). Encrypts PHP or HTML files (including HTML or javascript embedded into PHP). Encrypts HTML web pages as an added extra Offers ZLIB compression as part of the encryption. Your PHP pages can be compressed to approximately 1/3 of their file size.

Full review available at

http://www.deprice.com/codelock.htm

By: David D. Deprice

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